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This entry was posted on Monday, November 3rd, 2014 at 9:59 am and is filed under misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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3 Responses to I applaud for Google

Actually the article by a typically sloppy journalist has been corrected (in a note at the end). Google’s official mission statement never had “don’t be evil” in it.

You seem to have rather high standards for corporations. I can’t think of any other corporate entity that has used large sums of money to pursue so many exciting, highly speculative, risky initiatives that have the potential to enrich millions of people’s lives.

Also, typically of The Guardian, the obligatory handwringing about corporations has to be injected, using the weaselly “some people are concerned” format which never says _which_ people, other than the quasi-socialists at the newspaper: “some have drawn concerns that the company is overstepping its bounds. Research areas in biotechnology, health and medicine, for instance, have been traditionally funded by public money.”

So we should be worried that a corporation (horror!) is investing in areas that governments are too slow, stupid, or ignorant to mess with. I am so, so tired of the self-righteous naysayers at that horrible newspaper.

However I realize you are concerned more with First Amendment issues. In that area, yes, Google has compromised. I wonder if other corporations might have compromised more.

We should absolutely be worried of an organization that tries to “control ALL the data.” The consolidation of of e-mail, cloud storage, maps, search history, shopping, books, and even medical records is of great concern to me. The value of that “metadata” to an oppressive government (not that we have one of those, right? :)) cannot be understated, and now it’s all in one place.

If Google abuses our data, people who care about this will create sufficient demand to support a competitor. We have already seen competitors to Facebook (Ello, and now Tsu) which emphasize data security.

When the government abuses your data, you have no alternative. Moreover, government has armed forces at its disposal.